What lies in store for the Spirax-Sarco Engineering share price?

Economic uncertainty remains a major concern in many industry sectors. For investors in well known companies like Spirax-Sarco Engineering (LON:SPX), the question is: where will prices go from here?

Spirax-Sarco Engineering is part of an elite club of UK shares which all have market capitalisations in excess of £1 billion. The stock is currently valued at £7,731m.

This special group of large-caps has a powerful presence in the investment funds and pension portfolios of millions of savers. So their performance is closely watched.

Over the past 12 months, the Spirax-Sarco Engineering share price has seen an absolute move of -17.6%.

Bearing in mind that economic turmoil has affected some sectors worse than others, it’s also worth thinking about that performance in the context of the overall market.

On a relative basis, shares in Spirax-Sarco Engineering have moved by -19.6% over the past year and by -33.9% over the past six months.

But what now?

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Do analysts rate it as a buy, sell or hold?

Regardless of recent performance, the main question for investors is what the future holds. In uncertain economic conditions, it's often difficult to get an accurate view. The good news is that analysts generally understand the market's biggest businesses better than most, so they are well-placed to make predictions. That shows up in their Buy, Hold and Sell recommendations.

Among the analysts covering Spirax-Sarco Engineering, there are currently:

• 1 Buy recommendations

• 13 Hold recommendations

• 1 Sell recommendations

With this kind of information, it's possible to start forming a view about the outlook for any share. A combination of recent price performance and analyst recommendations gives you a flavour of whether the market is expecting a bright future - or whether there are causes for concern.

What does this mean for potential investors?

Spirax-Sarco Engineering is one of the most closely watched shares in the market. But while price trends and broker recommendations can give you an idea about the sentiment around a stock, they can't tell you everything.

To get a better understanding of the overall investment case, it's worth doing some investigation yourself. Indeed, we've identified some areas of concern with Spirax-Sarco Engineering that you can find out about here.